The Return of Ravana series

In May 2007 I de-camped to New Delhi in India with my wife Kerry. We lived there until September 2010, and saw a lot of the most famous tourist sites, met many fantastic people, and really did have the experience of a lifetime.

Being in a country littered with ancient fortifications and palace, with living descendants of some extraordinary events, and so much colour and chaos, naturally had an impact on us both. It certainly changed how I see the world, and of course, had an effect on my writing, the most obvious being that I had an idea for a story set in India.

The ‘genesis moment’ for the tale came from visiting the mighty Mehrangarh fortress in Jodhpur, where the handprints of the wives of the Maharaja, burnt on his funeral pyre, had been preserved beside an inner gate. From there, my imagination took flight, and the story was born.

I originally envisaged a single-book tale, but it became a four-book series after I shared some red wine with Mike Bryan, then CEO of Penguin India, and took up his suggestion that I incorporate aspects of the Ramayana, the great Indian epic of love, revenge, fidelity and war.

To learn more about The Ramayana, please click here.

The Return of Ravana series tells the story of four modern teenagers, who find themselves in peril from ghosts of the past. They come to realise that they are the reincarnations of four people who were caught up in the machinations of an evil sorcerer-king in India’s distant past. Their lives increasingly begin to echo the Ramayana, and they come to realise that they are doomed to try and prevent the return of India’s diabolic demon-lord, Ravana.

HOT NEWS: Jo Fletcher Books, the publisher of The Moontide Quartet series, are to re-release The Return of Ravana, beginning in 2015!

Pyre of Queens

- Published in India by Penguin India, released August 2010
- Published in New Zealand by Penguin New Zealand, released March 2011